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There And Back Again | Rounding The World

amelia earhart adventure quote

Delivering some kick-ass gigs whilst adventuring for AMA, BBC, Hasbro and The Friday Institute.

“When a great adventure is offered, you don’t refuse it.”Amelia Earhart

A couple of months ago I returned from a six week (felt longer) round-the-world adventure via Singapore, UK, Ireland, USA and back to NZ—an intense trip of family, reunions, love, illness, meetups, tragedy, reconnections, friendship, plus the following gigs:

Arts Marketing Association Annual Conference

Was the closing keynote for the three day Arts Marketing Association annual conference in Birmingham to 650 arts and cultural folks. Also did a panel on ’embedding digital experimentation’—good times:

Bringing the biggest AMA Conference to date to a close, DK delivered an absolute blinder of a keynote. Of course we knew he would—that's why we asked him to do this particularly important job!

Our theme was “Stay Curious” and DK urged and inspired us to think and do differently: To use social not just for marketing but to create uniting explosions of wonder; to seek not just improvement but innovation – embracing disruption, failure and risk; to consider all three ROIs (Return on Investment; Ripple of Impact & Risk of Ignoring); to adopt the number one social media strategy – comment on other people's content; to think about our audiences' audiences. DK was a total hit with our delegates and ended the conference on a real high.”
Jo Taylor, Chair of the Board for Arts Marketing Association

BBC Wales Internal Innovation Staff Lunchtime Sessions

Every month the BBC Wales innovation team sets up an internal staff lunchtime session to hear from three speakers (each getting 10 minutes to speak on their chosen topic). Was humbled to be given all three spots to share my thoughts on social media and digital innovation.

Afterwards, I got invited to be a judge on the Welsh Media Awards (specifically focussed on online):

What a thought provoking and entertaining presenter! DK delivered three superbly succinct talks for us, helping inspire staff here at BBC Wales and give them a glimpse of where we should be going on Social Media.
Robin Moore, Head of Innovation & Connected Studio, BBC Wales

Hasbro Social Media Days

Created and facilitated a two day off-site for the innovation and wider supporting team to explore developing a social media strategy for a new initiative. A mashup of design thinking and my own brand of discovery and exploration created an intense and challenging (in all the right ways) experience:

“DK crafted and facilitated a two-day off-site for a cross-departmental group of folks to explore the digital and social media opportunities / consequences of a new initiative. He steered the discussion and activities superbly, sensitive to the levels of literacies whilst igniting the latent talent in the room to a great set of outcomes.”
Phil Sage, Senior Director : Global Product Acquisition & Inventor Relations, Hasbro

North Carolina Digital Leaders Coaching Network

Keynoter for a two day event plus did a workshop on digital curation for the North Carolina Digital Leaders Coaching Network in Raleigh, organised by the wonderful The Friday Institute:

“DK recently spoke at an event we held in Raleigh, North Carolina where he was well received by all who attended. Prior to the event, DK spent time talking with the planning team to identify the needs of the audience to make sure that he would meet the needs of the participants. His presentation style was engaging and fast-paced and he took time to answer questions from participants afterwards. DK is a wealth of knowledge and a great presenter!”
Nancy Mangum, Digital Learning Lead, The Friday Institute


Always grateful for the opportunities to collaborate with amazing people who are passionate and good at their core.

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Twitter Roundup #3 | Curating The Curated

tasty treats

Sweet treats from my tweetmailing.

Here we go:

  1. How to start a successful blog (no excuses now) : youtube link / Tweetmail link
  2. 75 Years of classic poetry readings released free by Library of Congress : website link / Tweetmail link
  3. World’s biggest data breaches (greater than 30k records) visualised : website link / Tweetmail link
  4. 100,000 free art images in high-res from the Getty Museum : website link / Tweetmail link
  5. Umberto Eco: advice to young writers (& all us creatives) : vimeo link / Tweetmail link
  6. Handheld GoPro gimbal which stabilises your shots : website link / Tweetmail link
  7. An amazing tool / app to teach stuff : website link / Tweetmail link
  8. Pocket-sized-attachable-DSLR-quality iPhone cam : website link / Tweetmail link
  9. Another reason to love Keynote, you can create motion graphics with it : website link / Tweetmail link
  10. 12,644 public domain video footage for creative use : website link / Tweetmail link

Why am I doing this? Read previous Twitter Roundups posts.

Just in case you want to follow me on Twitter (or better yet, follow your dreams instead).

Image credit | CC 2.0
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Email Gating | Blocking Versus Trusting

tim ferris email gating

An email signup pop-up which appears directly above an actual email signup form on the page itself (via Four Hour Work Week blog).

Imagine this:

You head to a restaurant that a friend has told you good things about, all hungry and keen. You arrive and the place looks good. As soon as you take a step inside though someone blocks your way and asks for your postal address, with a smile. It’s explained that it’s so the restaurant can send you notices of when there’s new items on the menu or special offers. Again, said with a smile and a trusting wink accented by the promise they won’t send any spam, just good stuff.

Now you haven’t tried their food or experienced their service let alone seen a menu, would you want to eat there?

When you have your own site there’s a huge amount of control of the experience you want visitors to have and the relationships you want to build. Email newsletters are an element of that potential connection and content distribution.

Unfortunately, the growing trend in the past few years is ‘gating’ access to websites via email newsletter signup popups which block the content either as soon as you enter the site or after you scroll a little.

‘Email gating’ is slowly eroding the web and illustrates the shallow nature of the reliance on numbers to prove impact.

Some of us can still recall those intrusive popup ads in the early years of the web and how there’s a collective understanding how obtuse this strategy is (so much so we now have the blocks built into our browsers). There’s no difference for email newsletter signup popup.

If you visit a site which is email gated, there are three decisions available:

  • sign up
  • leave
  • close the popup and continue surfing

Only one of them serves the creator and unless the website owner is using a system utilising cookies to track the closing of the message so as not to serve it up again plus the website visitor is not using cookie blockers or software which cleans these out, this will happen every time someone visits the site. Every visit corroding the experience and the relationship (potential or existing).

And why do so many organisations, companies and individuals email gate?

Fear!

They are scared they aren’t relevant. Scared the market or tribe will walk away and won’t come back. Scared that quantity rules over quality. Terrified of doing this (ironically you have to sit through or click the ad off to get there).

If website owners don’t trust both their story and the ability of the visitors / tribe / users to find a simple signup form which sits in the sidebar or bottom of the page, then what other message does that convey. There is no hope. No trust. No respect.

Do the opposite.

Have more faith: in yourself, and us (as visitors).

The visitor also has a role. These tactics will only change if we the viewers of this content reach out to the creators and just ask for a little respect. Request, politely, that we now how this stuff works and if we like what you have to say we will trade. Our time or even our email address for a continued relationship.

So content creators and website makes / designers / founders, learn to tell your story and we’ll stick with you. Please stop interrupting us. Please stop making us not like you. Please help us, help you. Stop email gating.

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Twitter Roundup #2 | Curating The Curated

choice cuts of meat

Choice cuts from my meaty Tweetmailing.

Here we go:

  1. Car maker develops ‘impairment suit’ so their designers can experience old age : website link / Tweetmail link
  2. How the internet of things and the web can be used against us (if we’re not careful : video link / Tweetmail link
  3. Leader of state who shares his code : article link / Tweetmail link
  4. When opera and Instagram collide : website link / Tweetmail link
  5. Tiltshift your images for free : website link / Tweetmail link
  6. Why arts is more important than STEM : video link / Tweetmail link
  7. The challenge of growing into manhood : video link / Tweetmail link
  8. Kickstarting coding for kids : campaign link / Tweetmail link
  9. Your bank committed fraud : video link / Tweetmail link
  10. Stats of 24hrs after we announced TEDxWellington : webblog link / Tweetmail link
  11. How much it costs to buy a US politician : article link / Tweetmail link
  12. If you give presentations you need this : website link / Tweetmail link

As explained in the last update, the main reasons I use Twitter are for:

  • connecting / keeping in touch with wonderful souls / minds around the planet
  • listening and researching ideas / stuff
  • distributing delicious and juicy finds from my web wanderings

The last one, which I’ve been doing for a number of years now, is also a strategy of not just distribution and adding value, but also one of recording for future reference. I save all my tweets to a dropbox text file, an online google spreadsheet plus into an evernote folder (via ifttt.com), where it can be searched any time for previous content.

Also aware that many of these goodies get missed as only tweet them out once, hence the curation.

Follow me on Twitter (or better yet, follow your dreams instead).

Related posts: Twitter Roundups
Image credit | CC 2.0
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TEDx NZ Community | Open Sourcing Improvement

take the idea

An attitude and invitation.

When I first gained the TEDx license for Wellington, one of the best illustration of this great community came from the then license holder of TEDxQueenstown. Was attending their first event and commented how much I liked something they did, here was the response:

Take the idea. Make it better. Give it back.

It’s become a utility phrase for so many creative situations and always provokes a positive response.

Thank you Cesar.

Image credit and check out the NZ-based TEDx events coming up
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CatalystCreativ Wysdem Talk | Can Wisdom Be Designed?

Exploring a model for systemising wisdom.

In March I got to both attend and speak at Catalyst Creativ Week, Las Vegas, which was founded in 2012 in partnership with Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project.

As you’ll watch, the subject was nothing to do with social media, instead, my long overdue and yet-to-be-launched moonshot project exploring can wisdom be designed, wysdem.com and which I blogged about here.

The official line (although please judge for yourself above and leave any thoughts / guidance / ideas you have in the comments):

“DK was an engaging speaker at CatalystCreativ’s March Catalyst Week Showcase. He drew the audience into his talk with his research on how wisdom plays into systems and held their attention by posing important and thoughtful questions on this discussion. In his talk, he explored how wisdom plays into individual responsibility so that we can better understand how it plays into the systems around us.”
Evelyn Sabino, Communications & Events Manager at CatalystCreativ

Check out the other magnificent talks from the event as well, some gems in here:

Related post:What Does It Mean? | The Role Of The Interpreter & DIKUW Content Model | Big Wisdom
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Twitter Roundup #1 | Curating The Curated

best of

Curating the best and most tasty treats from my recent Tweetmailing.

Exploring a new concept here:

  1. Richard Branson and Peter Thiel are going to break the money transfer market : story link / Tweetmail link
  2. National UK news channel launches a gif-only Tumblr site : story link / Tweetmail link
  3. Video essays rule, especially ones done this well : video link Tweetmail link
  4. Three amazing questions to ask your users / customers / clients to truly understand them : blog post link / Tweetmail link
  5. One of the best keynotes I’ve seen in a while magnificently deconstructing the issue of all this online world stuff : video link / Tweetmail link
  6. Even if you can’t code you can still join a hackathon : video link / Tweetmail link
  7. Copyright free images a plenty : website link / Tweetmail link
  8. How to structure a video essay (and any story with the power of “therefore” and “but” plus “meanwhile back at the ranch”) : video link / Tweetmail link
  9. Looking to collaborate? Just get out and ask : video link / Tweetmail link
  10. And finally, a site to check how many people are in space right now : website link / Tweetmail link

The main reasons I use Twitter are for:

  • connecting / keeping in touch with wonderful souls / minds around the planet
  • listening and researching ideas / stuff
  • distributing delicious and juicy finds from my web wanderings

The last one, which I’ve been doing for a number of years now, is also a strategy of not just distribution and adding value, but also one of recording for future reference. I save all my tweets to a dropbox text file, an online google spreadsheet plus into an evernote folder (via ifttt.com), where it can be searched any time for previous content.

Also aware that many of these goodies get missed as only tweet them out once

Follow me on Twitter (or better yet, follow your dreams)

ADDENDUM—A little alert notified me of when I originally joined Twitter plus my first ever tweet:

mediasnackers 1st tweet

Related posts: Twitter Roundups
Image credit | CC 2.0
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Jad Abumrad | Gut Churn Of Creativity

jad bumrad radiolab

Reflective storytelling and analysing the ‘crappy queasy space’ in the journey of finding your true voice.

This week I attended a talk by Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center, Big Sky, Montana.

It was a storytelling masterclass with layers of different media from sound to text to animation to video (tapping into the VARK model of learning), all orchestrated by Jad as he weaved our attention deeply around the forms created.

The talk was a personal reflection on Jad’s own grappling journey with finding ‘his voice’ and the hunt for authenticity, ensuring you are true in your own self is so important as you’re often:

…forced to sit in the emptiness to face the authenticity.

In radio / podcasting, here’s his description of where the power lay:

…it’s like being with people whilst being by yourself…

And the ultimate goal in the act of producing is an attempt to:

…create an emptiness which is so much bigger than you.

With a splendid assortment of delectable stories and experiences to quote, from napkin sketches of radio shows story structures through to Ira Glass’s gap, Jad also shared his own three big lessons:

  1. Chasing the antelope: storytellers are like shamen as they lull an audience into a collective dream state. And just like the shamen, it’s not just asking the questions but living it, chasing it down, just like Scott Carrier;
  2. Chase the little shit: a lesson from a filmmaker friend regarding the cognitive effect of how paying attention to the smallest of details reframes a story to have massive impact;
  3. Follow the odds: how talking to poker player Annie Duke led to understanding how 25% odds are a great bet. Like the time Jad did a radio piece on how many colours we see in a rainbow compared to other animals. Hard to do in the medium of sound. So they converted the the colours of rainbow to sound which led to Jad assembling and conducting a choir in this radio piece.

Here’s an older and much condensed version (not as multi-layered, polished and doesn’t have a lot of the above) presented at a 99u conference:

 

Thanks Jad and gutted you’re too busy to explore a trip out to NZ to speak—let me know if you change your mind.

If you’re reading this Jad, would love to know what setup you were using (in terms of hard/software).
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Five Canvases To Create Businesses | Tools To Explore

Make love to the canvas.

A canvas is a tool which can help you to create businesses, social enterprises, communication plans plus deconstruct opportunities and intentions:

Business Model Canvas

Business Model Canvas

“The Business Model Canvas, is a strategic management and entrepreneurial tool. It allows you to describe, design, challenge, invent, and pivot your business model.”

Download ‘Business Model Canvas’ PDF

Value Proposition Canvas

The Value Proposition Canvas

“The Value Proposition Canvas makes explicit how you are creating value for your customers. It helps you to design products and services your customers want.”

Download ‘Value Proposition Canvas’ PDF.

Lean Canvas

Lean Canvas

Lean Canvas is a 1 Page business model for a faster, more effective way to communicate your business model with internal and external stakeholders.

Download ‘Lean Canvas’ PDF

Social Really Lean Canvas

The Social Really Lean Canvas

Devised by David Clearwater, Acceleration Director at Akina Foundation for social enterprises (with inspiration from the Download ‘Social Lean Canvas, obviously).

The Social Really Lean Canvas’ JPG.

Javelin Experiment Board Canvas

Javelin Experiement Board

The Experiment Board is free for you to use and make money from as an entrepreneur, consultant, teacher, or executive.

You pay via a tweet or just search online and you’ll find it.

ADDENDUM (27.4.15): Awesomely Simple Digital Questions

awesomely simple digital questions

Not exactly a business canvas, more a triage of awesome digital focussed questions which will give your institution / organisation a shot in the arm to rethink / reimagine your approach via Helge Tenno (download here)).


Hungry for more? Check out diytoolkit.org resources for a canvas on pretty much everything you can think of.

Am I missing anything?

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Narrative Podcasting | Learning Out Loud

different podcast types

Learning. Unlearning. Relearning.

I produced my first podcast nearly a decade ago. I went on to create over 200 more plus taught hundreds / thousands of others how to do it themselves via my social media courses / masterclasses.

Over the New Year break I spent some time unlearning what I know from this Alex Blumberg “Power Your Podcast with Storytelling” Creative Live course. Once you acclimatise to the nervous teaching style (sorry), there’s some fantastic gems for those who are new to this narrative style via Alex’s huge pedigree in this space (award-winning reporter and producer for This American Life and co-host of NPR’s Planet Money plus his new Startup podcast series).

As I’m highly kinaesthetic in my learning style I’ve been doing to learn.

Offered here with permission from Dennis Hodges (the interviewee) is my first attempt at narrative style podcasting:

Here’s what I learned:

  • have the story in mind before you start: sometimes other stories come out during an interview although having a story you want at least enables you to come out with something solid;
  • focus on one thing: you’ll hear from the outcome that I focussed on just the politicians eyes work. There was lots of other stuff we talked about which was equally as interesting, just this was something that was very different;
  • you have to be ruthless: we spoke for over 30mins and I got it down to just over 4mins which was hard work cutting out good stuff;
  • getting the interviewee to record their audio doesn’t always work: Dennis has a lot of audio hiss in the background which I tried for ages to clean up. Getting interviewees to record a sample in the future will help a lot (my audio could do with a rounder feel to it as well for which I’ll use my new mic in the future);
  • editing takes forever: seriously, ages!

I’m relearning the medium and upping my game for wysdem.com, and during my research I’ve noticed four types of podcasts:

  1. Soloing / Group—just one person or a group sharing ideas / insights / observations. Sometimes scripted, sometimes loose in its form. Sparse editing is employed and it’s the main model used by most video podcasters / vodcasters / vloggers as well;
  2. Interviews—simple one-to-one question and answer sessions. Medium investment in editing to ensure tidiness and the focus is very much on the interviewee and their offerings;
  3. Narrative—heavily edited and crafted. Emphasis is on the storytelling and clarity of theme / subject matter.

Each have their place although the latter is gaining more traction although it’s obviously the hardest to do well with it’s focus on crafting something the listener consumes as a cognitive or emotional journey.

So feel free to critique and offer ideas / guidance on the above.

It’s a first offering and an attempt to ‘learn out loud’ so approach with kindness which I’m sure you will. Thanks in advance.

Podcast music credit: Toivo161 via freesound.org
Thanks to @foomandoonian for suggesting the ‘group’ type.
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